A Court of Bones and Twilight
by M.Cassell
Summary: Long before Feyre Cursebreakers was a whisper of thought, there was another girl, in another forest... Carbhan is a half fae girl captured in the largest and most vicious place in Prythian - the Dusk Court. But not all is as it seems in the bloody court - enemies may become allies, even as the winds of a cruel revolution threaten to destroy the Dusk Court once and for all.


Description:

Thousands of years before Feyre Cursebreaker was so much as a whisper of thought on the breeze, there was another girl in another forest - Carbhan, a half fae girl eking out a living in the largest and most vicious court in Prythian, the Dusk Court.

When Carbhan is captured attempting to protect her friends, she find herself a possession of the sadistic High Lord Caer, oft known as The Bringer of Sleep. But not everything is as it seems in the bloody court - enemies may become allies as Carbhan navigates the waters of prejudice and entitlement that make up her home, even as the winds of a cruel revolution threaten to destroy the Dusk Court once and for all.

Through it all, there are some secrets Carbhan would do anything to protect... even if it means turning her back on the dark and troubled man who seems to be stealing her heart.

Author's Note

Hi guys, I am over the moon happy that you are looking at this! This may be a fanfic, but all the characters are original, (except maybe a brief cameo here and there,) so this is just the usual reminder that if you copy any of my plot or characters without permission or credit, _**I will rip your entrails out your nose**_ or something like that ❤️

Hope you like the cover, since I drew all the vines and thorns by hand, and it took hours.

Feel free to check this out over on Wattpad, too.

Anyway, enjoy the read!

Chapter 1

The forest had become a labyrinth of snow and ice.

I wasn't sure how long it had been like this - we were never good at tracking the passage of time. All I knew was that here, the cold was as much a blessing as a curse. It may have been harder to hunt in the winter, with so many prey animals hibernating or heading south to the warmest part of our huge peninsula, but it drove many of the creatures that hunted us into their dens as well. I would take an empty belly over a new set of claw marks across my back any day.

I shuddered, remembering the awful creature that had slashed me open the previous summer, my hand tightening around my bo until the swirling carvings bit into my fingers. The creature had been a horrible, dark thing, one of the monsters that had been beaten back from our shores centuries ago according to the elders, not returning until these past few years. Taller than a man, with leathery wings, bat like ears, clawed hands, and black eyes like tar, it had managed to get the drop on me while I was tracking a young doe. It would have killed me if Nareena hadn't been close enough to reach me before it could go for a second strike. She put three arrows in its hide before it ran. Even so, I nearly died of blood loss. It took every drop of magic in Samyani's leathphór blood, combined with his considerable healing knowledge, to keep me alive.

I sighed silently as I moved forward, bo always held at the ready. It had served me right, getting distracted by hunting while I was on patrol. There was a reason we weren't supposed to mix the two, but the doe had been _right there_ , and I had been stupid.

I trained my ears carefully on the snow-muffled sounds of the woods, listening for anything out of place, a breath, a snapping branch, while my eyes ran methodically across the trees that were both our refuge and our prison. True, they were the first barrier that kept us safe and hidden from the people of the all together too close for comfort city of Spiosrai Dubailte. But they were also the outermost ring of our movement. We could not pass them, couldn't explore the vast plains and coasts that made up the huge spit of land that was the Dusk Court.

In a way, I hated when it was our month for forest patrol. It may have been a nice change from the harsh landscapes of the mountains I usually walked, and I knew it was the most important area to watch - after all, we had to know if the people of Spiosrai Dubailte were coming too close - but there were times that I wished that I'd never trained with a bo, that I'd taken up as a hunter instead, making only short trips away from Codlata Siorai and returning home to a soft bed and a warm meal every evening. I'd even been offered such an apprenticeship once, shortly before I turned eight, by one of our master hunters. He'd said I had the steady hand, sharp focus, and attentive patience that were necessary for the hunters in our rocky region. Stupid me, instead I'd decided to train alongside two other younglings as part of a triur garda, one of the guard trios who swore together from early childhood, creating a bond deeper than than any based in blood or heart - strong enough to compare to the mating bond, according to to Amora, a garda who had found her mate, Teithi, in her thirty-fourth year. He frequently accompanied her on her patrols, having quickly grown close to her two garda partners. At first they had resented his presence, but Naois and Hefeydd were soon won over when they saw how happy Amora was with Teithi. An oath mixed with magic, the bond of triur garda made it impossible not to wish the best for your partners. Some people jokingly called them the ceithre garda, meaning the guard quartet, but they all laughed it off. I thought it could be useful in a way, providing an additional person to watch your back and split the territory watch with, but I still wasn't sure it was a good idea. Sure Amora could coordinate with Teithi just as well as she could her partners, maybe even better, but she was the only one - Naois and Hefeydd couldn't sense his location or emotional state the way they could with a fellow garda. It would be a liability if Teithi were in danger, and Amora was the only one who came running. They could both be killed before Naois and Hefeydd managed to track Amora to the location where she stopped.

I sighed again and shook my head. It wasn't like that would be an issue for my triur - at least I hoped not. Samyani had been in love with Nareena since we were children. If she showed up one day with a mate on her arm, it would break his heart. Oh, he would smile and congratulate her along with me, hiding his feelings just like he had from the first day she'd trounced him in our training and he gave her that first moony eyed look. She hadn't noticed when we were eight, and she still hadn't noticed more than twelve years later - surprising, given her observant nature. I was the only one Samy ever spoke to about his infatuation, and even to me he said little. He didn't want to risk making my relationship with Naree tense by talking too much about his feelings. I always told him he shouldn't worry about it, that there was nothing that could damage the bond between the three of us, but then again, he wouldn't be Samy if he wasn't always worried about something, I thought fondly.

I was almost done with my patrol for the day. I wondered if Naree had had any luck hunting - today was her turn to manage camp while Samy and I walked patrol. I was glad - she was by far the best cook out of the three of us. I always messed up the spices, or dried out the meat, and Samy couldn't cook up anything aside from a medical poultice or a rejuvenating tea. I gave a routine sweep of my mind, checking on the others - and froze. They were too close together. Samy was where he was meant to be, on the eastern segment of today's territory, but Nareena was much, much too close to him, crouching in a tree above him. I sensed their repressed panic and fear - they were trying to seal their emotions from me, so I wouldn't feel them and come running. There was only one reason that a garda would try to keep one of their members away. Samyani and Nareena thought there was no hope for survival. I switched out my bo for my bow, swinging the five foot staff of heavy wood into its sling across my back and pulling the recurved yew from its strap on my quiver. Calmly, I checked the string, and drew an arrow from the quiver. Once it was nocked securely on the string, I turned east, pinpointing my triur's location, and began to run.

Even running, I was carful not to make a sound. The thick, wet snow help, absorbing the impact of my leather boots as the soles pounded, as I tried to move faster. In that moment, I wished more than anything that I could winnow, that I could slip between the cracks in the world and drop instantly to where the other members of my triur were in danger. They shouldn't be facing whatever this was without me. Samy's specialty lay in healing and magical support, and Naree's close range weapons would be back at camp, so she could move more lightly through the trees. _I_ was the triur's close combat specialist! I had inherited almost all of my mother's Fae strength and speed. I could hold up in prolonged combat against a full blood far longer than either of them. They shouldn't try to keep me away when they were clearly in danger.

I pushed myself harder, practically flying over the snow. I just hoped it would be enough.

 _ **§§§§§**_

So this is the end of the first chapter. What did you think? I will be releasing chapters of about this length at least once per week, maybe more, depending on how much time I have to type - I just started University this week, so there will be weeks with more chapters, and weeks with less. It all depends on how much homework I have. However, I will promise you this - I won't abandon this project. Even if I vanish for a week, it just means that things are heavy at school, and _I will definitely be back._


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